Charmene Yap graduated from the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts with a Bachelor of Arts in Dance in 2006. During her studies she performed at the Hong Kong Dance Festival, was awarded a scholarship to attend the TaipeIDEA Intensive in Taiwan and spent a semester at Purchase College, New York on the student exchange program. During her 6 months in USA, she also worked with choreographer Karole Armitage and the Armitage Gone! Dance Company in In this dream that dogs me. Upon graduating from WAAPA, Charmene received an Australia Council Skills and Development Grant for young and emerging artists, which allowed her to second with several choreographers including Lucy Guerin, Sue Healey, and Tanja Liedtke.
Charmene has worked as a freelance dancer for various choreographers and companies around Australia and internationally. In March 2007, she joined Dancenorth in Townsville under the directorship of Gavin Webber. Touring the work Underground in Queensland during that year, she later returned to the company in 2008 for its remount for the Mobile States National Tour. Towards the end of 2007, Charmene joined Chunky Move working with Gideon Obarzanek to create the critically acclaimed hybrid work Mortal Engine. Awarded best visual or physical theatre production in the 2008 Helpmann Awards, Mortal Engine premiered at the Sydney Festival and continued touring nationally and internationally. Throughout the following years, she has performed with Chunky Move in Melbourne, Edinburgh, the Netherlands, Mexico, Germany, Spain, Philadelphia and New York. Charmene also worked with the Tasdance Company in 2008, performing Pink Lines choreographed by Kate Denborough and In Her Footsteps by Natalie Weir.
As a freelance artist, Charmene had the opportunity to be featured as an actor and dancer in the video art film Think Of Yourself As Plural, directed by David Rosetzky and choreographed by Lucy Guerin. She later returned to work with Lucy Guerin and her company in 2009 on the furst development of a new project to be premiered in 2010. Other choreographers whom Charmene have worked with include Antony Hamilton, Sue Peacock, Olivia Millard, Ong Yong Lok, Nanette Hassall, Gerard Van Dyck and Mew Chang Tsing. More recently at the end of 2009, she joined dancers Paul White and Kristina Chan for Tanja Liedtke’s Construct. Touring to Israel and Canada, she took on the late choreographer’s original performing role in the work.
Charmene was nominated for the prestigious world-wide Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative Award and has been a successful applicant for the 2009/10 SCOPE program to expand her interest in architecture.
Charmene joined Sydney Dance Company in January 2010.
